As you may have heard earlier this week, a developer named Ryan Winzen had created a StarCraft 2 mod called World of StarCraft. The mod would change the RTS based game to more like an MMO like World of Warcraft.

The videos of the game started to appear on YouTube and were removed by Blizzard promptly and a phone call was made to the developer by Blizzard lawyers. It looked as if Blizzard was worried that another developer was stealing their product.

Well today Blizzard has cleared up the misunderstandings across the internet by issuing at statement regarding the matter. Blizzard stated that the issue was more with the name of the mod not with the way it was used. Blizzard also stated that they did not mean to halt the development of the mod and invited the developer to their campus to visit the StarCraft 2 team. However he was also offered an interview with Riot games as soon as the news surfaced that Blizzard had removed the videos. The Blizzard team was quick to ensure the public that they want to encourage this type of development with the StarCraft Editor and not stunt it. Read the entire statement below:

Earlier this week, a player-made StarCraft II mod called World of StarCraft and described as a StarCraft MMO was featured on a number of prominent gaming news sites, catching the attention of gamers as well as our own. With the name so closely resembling that of World of Warcraft, we wanted to discuss the title of the mod with the developer, and as part of our routine procedure, we contacted YouTube to request the video be removed while that discussion took place. We were also curious about the project and wanted to discuss with the developer what the mod entailed.

It was never our intention to stop development on the mod or discourage the community from expressing their creativity through the StarCraft II editor. As always, we actively encourage development of custom maps and mods for StarCraft II, as we’ve done with our strategy games in the past. That’s why we release an editor with our RTS games, and why we feature top player-created content in the custom game search. It’s also why we held a contest to spotlight the best community-crafted StarCraft II mods at last year’s BlizzCon, and why we’ll continue to improve Battle.net to better showcase player-created content.

Like many players in the community, we’re looking forward to seeing the continued development of this mod, and as part of our ongoing discussion, we’ve extended an offer to the developer to visit the Blizzard campus and meet with the StarCraft II development team. As always, we appreciate all of the efforts of the talented and enthusiastic mod-making community, and we look forward to seeing and playing what they create using the StarCraft II editor in the future.